I have a new DS-2CD2032-I bullet camera with 5.3.0 firmware (North American). When I play back recorded video that’s stored on a local SMB server, the video is messed up (mostly missing).
The camera is configured to record to a local NAS using SMB. The SMB server is a Mac mini on a 100 Mbps LAN, with an external hard drive dedicated to the camera. It took a while to figure out how to mount the SMB share and get it ‘formatted’, but I got past that roadblock thanks to helpful postings here.
I’ve configured the camera to do ‘Basic Event’ motion-triggered recordings. (i.e., no timed recordings). It’s set for no pre-record, and 5 seconds of post-record. Therefore, every triggered video clip should be at least 5 seconds long.
I’ve had it running in this mode for a couple of days. Motion detection seems to be working fine, and the logs show the start and stop of various motion detect events as people, pets, vehicles (and bugs) pass in front of the camera.
When I view the Playback page, and click the Play button, the series of recorded clips start to play. But instead of complete 5-second (or longer) clips, I get shortened clips, typically a second or two. The first clip starts to play from the beginning, then abruptly cuts to the next one. It starts to play, then cuts to the next one. And so on. Some of them might play for 2 or 3 seconds. Occasionally, an entire recorded clip will be displayed: 5 seconds, or even longer if the motion event was extended.
My first thought was that the recordings were impaired, due to bad network connection, Mac mini too slow, dodgy hard drive, etc. However, that’s not the problem. I opened the /datadir0 folder on the Mac mini, and found the hik00000.mp4 file in which the recorded video clips are stored. That file can be opened/viewed with VLC. In it, I find that motion-triggered recordings were all captured in their entirety: all are a minimum of 5 seconds long (thanks to the post-record setting). Some are 10, 12, 20, 25 seconds, depending on the duration of the motion event.
It appears that the playback firmware in the DS-2CD2032-I has a bug. Instead of playing each video clip to completion, it aborts many/most clips prematurely and jumps to the next one. Playback of a series of clips then invariably ends with “Plug-in Failure”. The Webcomponents plug-in seems to be a buggy piece of software.
I’ve also noticed that the timeline at the bottom of the Playback window fails to display the little red lines for a lot of the recorded clips. I’ve had instances where the timeline had no red lines whatsoever, making it look like there were no motion events captured. Zooming in on the timeline with the +button will usually reveal some red lines.
i’m using Safari 9.1.2 on OSX 10.11.6. The plug-in is WebVideoPlugin_V3.0.5.43build20160118, downloaded from the Hikvision website.
I tried Chrome, but the Hikvision plug-in doesn’t seem to be compatible with Chrome anymore.
Is this behavior when recording to an SMB server typical for Hikvision cameras? I can’t imagine that it’s defective hardware, so there’s no point in returning it for a replacement. It’s buggy firmware. The inability to play back entire motion-triggered recordings makes it problematic to use such a configuration for security purposes.
The camera is configured to record to a local NAS using SMB. The SMB server is a Mac mini on a 100 Mbps LAN, with an external hard drive dedicated to the camera. It took a while to figure out how to mount the SMB share and get it ‘formatted’, but I got past that roadblock thanks to helpful postings here.
I’ve configured the camera to do ‘Basic Event’ motion-triggered recordings. (i.e., no timed recordings). It’s set for no pre-record, and 5 seconds of post-record. Therefore, every triggered video clip should be at least 5 seconds long.
I’ve had it running in this mode for a couple of days. Motion detection seems to be working fine, and the logs show the start and stop of various motion detect events as people, pets, vehicles (and bugs) pass in front of the camera.
When I view the Playback page, and click the Play button, the series of recorded clips start to play. But instead of complete 5-second (or longer) clips, I get shortened clips, typically a second or two. The first clip starts to play from the beginning, then abruptly cuts to the next one. It starts to play, then cuts to the next one. And so on. Some of them might play for 2 or 3 seconds. Occasionally, an entire recorded clip will be displayed: 5 seconds, or even longer if the motion event was extended.
My first thought was that the recordings were impaired, due to bad network connection, Mac mini too slow, dodgy hard drive, etc. However, that’s not the problem. I opened the /datadir0 folder on the Mac mini, and found the hik00000.mp4 file in which the recorded video clips are stored. That file can be opened/viewed with VLC. In it, I find that motion-triggered recordings were all captured in their entirety: all are a minimum of 5 seconds long (thanks to the post-record setting). Some are 10, 12, 20, 25 seconds, depending on the duration of the motion event.
It appears that the playback firmware in the DS-2CD2032-I has a bug. Instead of playing each video clip to completion, it aborts many/most clips prematurely and jumps to the next one. Playback of a series of clips then invariably ends with “Plug-in Failure”. The Webcomponents plug-in seems to be a buggy piece of software.
I’ve also noticed that the timeline at the bottom of the Playback window fails to display the little red lines for a lot of the recorded clips. I’ve had instances where the timeline had no red lines whatsoever, making it look like there were no motion events captured. Zooming in on the timeline with the +button will usually reveal some red lines.
i’m using Safari 9.1.2 on OSX 10.11.6. The plug-in is WebVideoPlugin_V3.0.5.43build20160118, downloaded from the Hikvision website.
I tried Chrome, but the Hikvision plug-in doesn’t seem to be compatible with Chrome anymore.
Is this behavior when recording to an SMB server typical for Hikvision cameras? I can’t imagine that it’s defective hardware, so there’s no point in returning it for a replacement. It’s buggy firmware. The inability to play back entire motion-triggered recordings makes it problematic to use such a configuration for security purposes.